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Robin
Sullenberger is arguably the hardest working man on
the planet. In the daytime, he drives 70 miles over
the mountains – an hour and a half, one way --
from his home in Highland
County
to his office in
Harrisonburg,
where he runs the economic development program for
the Shenandoah Valley Partnership. Evenings, he
serves as chairman of the Highland
County
board of supervisors, a job made more demanding by
the fact that the county can’t afford to hire a
county administrator. Weekends, he helps his wife
run their cattle farm. As he says without pretense
or exaggeration, “My typical day is 12 to 14 hours
long.”
Fortunately
for Sullenberger, the day job is going well. The Shenandoah
Valley,
though not without its challenges, has one of the
lowest unemployment rates of any region in the state. But
the evening job, providing government services in Highland
County,
isn’t much fun right now. He’s
looking at a 13 percent increase in the property tax
rate this year. As a large landowner himself, he
will feel the voters' pain.
Governing
Highland
County
presents special difficulties: It has the lowest
population of any county in the state, about 2,500
– which also happens to be the lowest of any
county east of the Mississippi
River.
As Sullenberger has learned, municipal government is
an enterprise that benefits from economies of scale
– which Highland lacks. Try operating a countywide K-12 school system with
300 children. Try running a social services program
when placing two kids into unbudgeted protective
care plunges the county into budgetary turmoil.
Don’t even ask about un-funded state mandates. Says
Sullenberger: “They’re phenomenally detrimental
to us.”
Highland
County
is more than a curiosity, more than a municipal
Ripley’s Believe it or Not. Its experience could
portend the fiscal woes of other
Virginia
counties that are losing population. As
manufacturing activity continues to move off-shore,
dozens of Virginia mill towns and rural communities
are losing their economic underpinnings. Even
agriculture is a marginal proposition in counties
isolated by mountain ridges and two-lane roads. Young
people who leave to pursue higher education rarely
return. But as the population shrinks, rigid state
mandates don't retract. The citizens who remain behind are forced to cinch their belts and find
a way to support an increasingly urban, 21st-century level of
government
services.
To
visit Highland County is to take a step back to in
time. Billing itself as “America’s
Switzerland,”
Highland
offers stunning vistas of wooded mountains and
valley farmland. Its 250-person county seat, the
town of
Monterey,
hosts the annual Maple Festival that celebrates the
opening of the trees and the making of maple syrup.
But the county, far off the beaten track, has never
been an attractive location for industry. The
population, which stood at 5,647 in 1900, has
declined steadily to 2,518 a century later.
The
economic base is largely agricultural, but even that
isn’t very competitive, concedes Sullenberger.
“It’s become very difficult for pure farmers to
make a living. What you find now is more part-time
farmers. Farmers have to supplement their incomes
through various part-time and full-time jobs.”
Highland's location is so remote and the workforce
so small that few businesses have an
interest in investing there.
Beneath
the placid surface, however, Highland’s
economic base is churning:
The county is becoming a haven for urban refugees,
many of them from the
Washington,
D.C.
area. Attracted by the isolation and beauty, outsiders
have snapped up crumbling old farmhouses and fixed
them up. Some outsiders move in to stay, creating an
eclectic mix of intellectuals, business
executives and what Sullenberger describes as "old-style mountain
folk."
Many
home buyers treat their residences as vacation
homes. From a tax standpoint, absentee property
owners are a mixed blessing. They contribute to the
tax base and demand little in the way of services.
That helps keep the tax rates low – only $.55 per
hundred dollars of assessed value. Even if the board
of supervisors hikes the rate to $.62 per hundred,
as Sullenberger fears it will have to do, it’s
still low by comparison to other Virginia
localities.
But
outsiders also bid up real estate prices. “That
creates a false sense of wealth,” Sullenberger
says. While county residents may be land rich, most
are cash poor. At $23,110 per capita in 2000, Highland
County
incomes were 25 percent below the state average.
Raising taxes is not a formula for rural prosperity.
Says Sullenberger: “People own several hundred
acres of land, but it’s not terribly productive in
terms of income. A lot of people have been forced to
sell.”
High
land values hurt again when the state dispenses
funds for K-12 education. The state relies upon a
complex formula that calculates a locality’s
“revenue capacity” to tax its citizens. Highland
ranks among the highest-capacity municipalities in
the state – 121st out of 135th,
comparable to larger, suburban counties like Hanover
and James
City.
By contrast, its “revenue effort” – a measure
of how much it actually taxes itself compared to its
revenue capacity – was the fifth lowest in
the
state in 1999/2000.
By
urban standards, Highland
County
doesn’t exert itself fiscally. But Highlanders
don’t believe that government ought to provide
every service. Volunteers staff the fire
departments. Civic clubs and church organizations
provide the means for the community to help those in
need. Says Sullenberger: “The county subsists on
volunteer efforts.” Trouble is, the state
doesn’t count the time or or money donated to
volunteer efforts when calculating “revenue
effort.”
Sullenberger
has lobbied state officials to cut Highland
some slack but can’t find much sympathy.
“We’ve been hurt by our school system’s record
of achievement," he says. "Comparatively, the achievement
scores are high. Of the 30 kids in the graduating
class, 75 percent went on to higher education.
People say, ‘You seem to be doing OK.’”
At
some point, the system cannot sustain itself.
Classes are shrinking dramatically. There were only
13 children in the 2001-2002 kindergarten class, and
projections say the number could fall below 10
within five years. A school system that small
can’t efficiently support the administrative
overhead required by legislators and bureaucrats in Richmond.
“You run into a ceiling,” says Sullenberger.
“We’ve had to face it with our school system.
You get to a level where it’s not economically
feasible.”
As
a professional economic developer, Sullenberger
hopes that economic development can
stabilize the population and tax base – but he's
realistic about what might be achievable. Perhaps Highland's most
important initiative is bringing high-speed Internet
connections to the town of Monterey.
Broadband connectivity will make it possible to bring
distance-learning labs to the schools, will
provide locals a telecommuting alternative to
driving outside the county for employment, and
should make the town’s incubator
more attractive. Already, the small facility has
attracted a tenant from Richmond.
The
best prospect for economic development may be
tapping the resources of newcomers. One man from Pennsylvania,
a spelunking enthusiast who has owned property in Highland
County
for years, owns a company that assembles small,
high-tech cameras used to inspect wells. The
businessman is about to move the operation to Highland
County,
creating about a dozen high-quality jobs. It’s
exactly the kind of business the county wants, says
Sullenberger: small and environmentally benign.
Meanwhile, land developers have begun sniffing
around. The county has received its first
subdivision proposals.
But
Sullenberger treds carefully. People choose to
live in Highland
County because it offers the kind of life they’re
looking for -- and they don't want to ruin it.
“Many of the people who move to the county feel
they have found utopia,” he says. Although no one wants to change
the county's distinctive
character, old-timers wouldn’t mind tweaking
things. They'd like to create enough economic
opportunity to give their children a reason to stay
in the county. “A part of the society – younger
people in particular, people who have been there all
their lives– would like to see some
development.”
Opinions
vary as to what is appropriate and what is not, says
Sullenberger. “It’s something we work on
non-stop.”
Jobs…
tax base… development… quality of life. These
are the basic buzzwords in debates played out in
rural counties across Virginia
as each community seeks to define a vision for its
future.
--
April
21, 2003
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